mid century modern dining room chairs

hey welcome back to jonny builds wherethis week i built two of these simple modern plywood chairs out of one sheetof plywood and i did it all for the modern maker podcast rockler plywoodchallenge let's see how i did it this project starts with a single sheetof 4 foot by 8 foot 3/4 inch baltic birch plywood each one of these chairsis made from a half sheet of plywood so i started by marking out and breakingdown the sheet of plywood in half with my track saw next i set my table sawfence to 5 inches and ripped 4 of these 5 inch wide strips and these will serveas the back legs and uprights of the chair and since i'm making 2 chairs irip 4 of these strips from each one of

the half sheets of plywood here you seeme using two scraps of plywood to set the fence on the table saw and rippingdown the rest of each one of the half sheets since the plywood is actually alittle bit less than 3/4 inches this is an important step for measuring andmarking for the entire rest of the project you'll see what i mean as we goalong and when it's all done you'll end up with 34 of these one and a half inchstrips and moving on to the back leg uprights i measured them at 32 inchesset up a stop block and then cut them over on the miter saw the offcuts from the back legs getripped down in half and become the

seatback horizontal stretchers all ofthe one and a half inch strips get cut down to 17 inches and for each chair youneed 33 of these pieces then i could organize and lay out all the pieces thati would need for each chair starting with 21 of these strips that getlaminated together to make up the seat bottom next i glued up all the stripsfor the seat and i really try to keep these as flat as possible to save timefor sanding later next i glued up six pairs of theseone-and-a-half inch pieces for each chair to become the lower stretchers andfront legs i also glued up pairs of the five-inch wide pieces that become theback legs you need 2 for each chair i

made a template on some half inch mdfand to mark out the angles i just use this cheap protractor the back legssplay inward at 6 degrees i marked out a 26 inch line at this 6 degree angle andthen use one of the laminated pairs of one and a half inch stripsto set the thickness the backrest gets marked out at 6 inches long and it'splays backwards at 7 degrees i use my bandsaw to cut out the legtemplate then i transfer the template on to each one of the four leg blanks i cutout the legs in the bandsaw making sure to cut outside of the lines that i hadmarked i attach the template to the legs i cut out with some double-sided tapeand protip don't use this much tape this

was really hard to get off this is a oneand a half inch flush trim bit and that top bearing rides against the templateand trims the leg blank to match the template exactly then i hit all the legswith some 120 grit sandpaper to clean any marks left by the router bed aftersquaring up the front of the seat i set the saw blade to 6 degrees and this willallow the back of the seat to ramesh the 6 degree angle of the legs each one ofthe seats gets cut to 16 inches and this is measured from where the seat is atits longest this is a good time to sand the seats up to 120 grit and it's also agood time for you to hit that subscribe button to stay up to date with all theproducts i've got coming up i measured

15 and a half inches up on the back legswhich marks out where the bottom of the seat will go the lower stretchers sit aninch and a half and below the seat and i marked out their locations as wellbecause of the angle i couldn't use dominoes to attach the backs of theseats and the stretchers so i've made this drilling template withthree-eighths inch holes to drive in screws lateri drilled a few pilot holes and attach the back legs to the seats with two anda half inch screws to make the front legs i use one of thelaminated 17 inch long pieces and then cut it down to 15 inches on the crosscutsled the front legs get attached to the

seat with domino's and here you see memarking out alignment lines for that again you don't need a domino to buildthese chairs you could use screws plug in with dowels like i did on the back ofthe seats it's just what i have and what works easiest for me i set my saw bladeto 7 degrees and then cut bevels in the upper stretchers to match the angle ofthe backrest all the horizontal stretchers except for the sidestretchers get cut down to 12 inches wide i marked out the locations for thedomino's on the upper stretchers and then transfer these marks over to thebackrest where they will attach i measured five and a half inches upfrom the bottom of the legs and cut in

domino's for the lower stretchers i thendid a dry assembly of the chair using all the stretchers that i had cut so farthere we go now on the side stretchers there's a sixdegree angle in the back and then it butts up to that 90 degree angle on thefront so you have to measure these out and cut them to fit i made small passeson the table saw in order to get that perfect fit which ended up being 14 and7/8 inch at its longest point here i'm laying out the location of that frenchstretcher which again is an inch and a half below the bottom of the seat idrilled in a few pilot holes for the side stretchers and then attached themthe screws but then i had to unattach

everything take it all apart to sandeverything up and get it ready for final assembly i started putting this chair together byattaching the front stretcher to the legs and then i could attach the twoside stretchers as well the rest of the assembly is just like you saw me do inthe dry fit only this time i'm adding glue and for the last bit of assembly i'musing these 3/8 inch oak dowels to plug up all the screw holes and finally i can move on to finishingi used a clear matte polycrylic applied

three coats and these chairs were allfinished hey everybody thanks for watching and thanks to the guys over atthe modern maker podcast mic ben and chris for putting on this one sheet ofplywood challenge now a couple months ago i drew up the design for this verysimple yet modern plywood chair and i was listening to the modern makerpodcast and they were talking about the upcoming challenge and i got the feelingthat it was gonna be a 1 sheet of plywood challenge so i held off and mani'm really glad that i did so this is now my official entry into the rocklerplywood challenge and i'm really happy with the way it turned out i i reallylike working with baltic birch it's one

of my favorite materials if you haven'twatched it already go check out my apply wood dining table there's a link to itup in the corner and i did the same technique i laminated multiple layers ofbaltic birch plywood together and one thing about baltic birch is it's just areally nice material to work with when you laminate it together and you see allthe different plies it looks really good and gives the piece a very unique sleeplinear look and i just love the way it looks i really wanted to show off allthe plies in the seat i tried to limit the veneer face as much as possible buti think it looks cool the contrast of having the plies on the front with theveneer face on the side so let me know

what you think about this building inthe comments down below if you liked it make sure you hit that thumbs up and ifyou haven't already please subscribe but really helps my channel grow and a bigthank you to everyone that's subscribed all ready you can check out behind thescenes stuff on instagram at johnny builds so thank you everybody forchecking this one out and we'll see you back here next time you

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